Coffee beans

A coffee seed, commonly called coffee bean, is a seed of the coffee plant, and is the source for coffee. It is the pit inside the red or purple fruit often referred to as a cherry. Just like ordinary cherries, the coffee fruit is also a so-called stone fruit. Even though the coffee beans are seeds, they are referred to as "beans" because of their resemblance to true beans. The fruits – coffee cherries or coffee berries – most commonly contain two stones with their flat sides together. A small percentage of cherries contain a single seed, instead of the usual two. This is called a "peaberry". The peaberry occurs only between 10 and 15% of the time, and it is a fairly common (yet scientifically unproven) belief that they have more flavour than normal coffee beans. Like Brazil nuts (a seed) and white rice, coffee beans consist mostly of endosperm.

The two most economically important varieties of coffee plant are the Arabica and the Robusta; 75–80% of the coffee produced worldwide is Arabica and 20% is Robusta. Arabica beans consist of 0.8–1.4% caffeine and Robusta beans consist of 1.7–4% caffeine. As coffee is one of the world's most widely consumed beverages, coffee beans are a major cash crop and an important export product, counting for over 50% of some developing nations' foreign exchange earnings.

According to popular legend, the coffee plant was discovered in Ethiopia by a goatherd named Kaldi.

South America is now responsible for about 45% of the world's total coffee exports. Most of this coffee is grown in Brazil.

The United States imports more coffee than any other nation. The per capita consumption of coffee in the United States in 2011 was 4.24 kg (9 lbs), and the value of coffee imported exceeded $8 billion. As of 2015, Americans consumed approximately 400 million cups of coffee per day, making the United States the leading consumer of coffee in the world.

Coffee plants grow within a defined area between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, termed the bean belt or coffee belt.

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